Abigail

by Malcolm Macdonald

  She told them of her training for domestic service and of her first jobs, of the marvel of eating every day and always having boots on her feet, of the ambition that led her from scullery to upstairs maid in five hard but satisfying years.

  And they’re still listening, she thought. It was amazing and exhilarating. An audience of rich ladies listening in respectful silence, some visibly moved—and she nothing but an orphanage scullery maid! Of course, it was because of what that Baroness had said first.

  She described the many kindnesses she’d been shown, and then—the beginning of her shame. How, in the last great house, she had repaid her employers’ generosity. How the young daughter of the house had asked her to tell secrets that no decent young girl should be told. And she had told those secrets.

  She gave herself all the excuses: the girl had made her take drink…she was commanded to tell…it flattered her to think she knew more than the young lady with all her Latin and Greek…she was showing off. And then it came to her—the real reason, the one she had forgotten and buried all these years.

  “No,” she said in a hushed voice that compelled attention. “No excuses. I’ll tell you—I wanted to spoil her innocence, like what mine had been spoiled. I loved her. I loved my mistress. There’s nothing I wouldn’t of done for her. But I hated her innocence. I wanted her to know of life what I had always known.

  “It was wrong. But I paid for it. Oh, I paid as I believe no woman should be asked to pay for so brief a slip.”

  Her eyes found the Countess and a hatred inflamed her. Others did wrong too, but they had not been asked to pay.

  She told of her dismissal without a character and the impossibility of finding honest and honourable work, of the rotten food she begged in the markets, of sleeping rough and feeling herself hourly slipping from the respectability she had known as an upstairs maid down to the lowest depths. She described her spell as a shirt seamstress and remembered for them the dingy garret, the numb fingers, the smarting eyes, the body that would never leave off aching—and the few shillings a week it brought in. The starvation. The sickness that followed.

  Again and again her eyes returned to the Countess; that woman should pay, she thought.

  “Then they said me dad had died. They said he was buried in the pauper cemetery out in Highgate. It could of been—well, it could of been halfway to Leeds to a starving, sick gel. But somehow I got there. Somehow I gave his grave a last tending before the cross rotted. But it was my undoing, that cemetery. Or was it? That’s what I want to ask you. That’s what I want to know.

  “The only honest work I could get was killing me. In two more months I’d of been dead of honest work. Then here was this gentleman. A kindly, youngish gentleman—a railway engineer, he said he was, soon to be married. He told me what he’d like, and he showed me four and six-pence. I said no, but he said gels like me always say no and we never mean it. That was the first time in me life when I realized I was a ‘gel like me’. Afterwards, when he found out I’d never been ‘a gel like me’ before, he took me back to his rooms in London, and when I left next day I had food inside me and a sovereign in my pocket. A month’s earnings for a shirt seamstress.”

  The Countess was weeping. Other women were dabbing their eyes, too, but the only one who mattered was the Countess; her tears discharged a debt. The woman on the stage was satisfied.

  “You may imagine I gave up sewing shirts at once, but I didn’t. I was brought back to sickness and starvation again before I took, once more, to being ‘a gel like me.’ And then it was only the once—until I was starving again. And so I went on, four or five times, only taking to my shame when I could bear the hunger no further.

  “But there was no future in it. I could see that. The day would come when I’d be too old to escape starvation in that way. I nearly said ‘in that easy way,’ but it’s not easy. I won’t dwell on it, but I’ll say this: Walk along any street and pick any dozen gentlemen who look as if they might have a loose guinea about them and then imagine how ‘easy’ it might be for a woman brought up respectable and religious to come between that man and his gold.

  “But I won’t pretend it was all disgust, neither, though after four years I was glad to hang up all me finery and buy a decent, honest little shop and settle to a respectable life. In those four years I knew the first companionship with refined people. You’d scarce credit the number of gentlemen who paid me—paid me five or ten pounds…to do nothing more than listen to them talk. They’d kick off their boots, lay on the bed, and talk. Talk about their work, their wives, their homes, their families. All their fears and disappointments. All their lost hopes. All their dreams. That’s all they wanted me for—to listen. And to say I understood.

  “The funny thing was, I did. I did understand. I used to cry for them at times it was so sad. Sad they couldn’t be laying by their own wives, telling them. Confessing where they failed instead of hiding it and then coming and telling the likes of me. But many and many’s the man who’s said to me, ‘You’re the only person in the world I can really talk to.’ If you ask me, being a man—having to be a man—is a terrible burden at times.

  “Times was I’d feel guilty at all the affection they gave me when they should of given it their wives. And I didn’t want it—what could I do with it? Other times I’d be angry. Why couldn’t they get that understanding back home!

  “If you want to know, I quit after four years because I’d saved two thousand pounds.”

  There was a concerted gasp.

  “Yeah! ’Course, I’d lived meanwhile, and lived well. I daresay I took three thousand in them four years. Yes—took. Not from men, but from their homes and their wives and their families. That’s who I really took it from. And what did I give? I thought I gave nothing. To the men as talked, I gave an understanding that was useless. To the rest I gave an imitation that was worse. A nothing—and a nothing. That’s what I thought I gave. But I was wrong.

  “I gave the most precious thing what I had. I never even knew I had it, and no one knew they’d tooken it off of me. What is it—you tell me—what is it as lets us love? ’Cos that’s what I gave in those four years. I didn’t miss it—I never knew it was there. But after that I could no more love a man than I could save Margate beach from the tides. I hated them—men.

  “I could of killed them all. If there’d been a legal day for murder, I’d of worked all twenty-four hours at it.

  “So what did I escape from? One prison to another. It served me right. I should of done the decent, respectable thing and died of starvation like a good, quiet needlewoman. Instead I was set to die in mortal hate. Even if I lived to be a hundred, I’d die in hatred. That’s how strong it was. But then I met a man…”

  She paused and looked far away. His name was Pepe. She remembered.

  “A man who was as rare…”

  His infinite tenderness to her. Their gentle, marvellous unity.

  “A man who…”

  Their love!

  She broke down and wept, for suddenly she remembered everything.

  There was a commotion in the hall. Someone was striding down the centre gangway, but Abigail could see nothing through her tears and through the veil. The person came up onto the stage. An arm went round her. A voice spoke. “All right, me old love?”

  It was Annie. Bewilderment stirred her mind. That was Annie. Then…

  “All right, gel?” Annie repeated, concern beginning to edge out the warmth in her voice.

  She nodded. Annie drew breath and faced the audience. “I am this gel’s sister,” she said. Then she laughed—a strained laugh. “You’d never believe it to hear us speak, would you!”

  Among the audience it brought the slightest relaxation to a tension that had become intolerable.

  “I’ll tell you what she was going to say. She was going to say she met a man who was a man. A gentleman and a gentle man. You may t
hink it was important that he’d been to Cambridge University, but it wasn’t. You may think it important that he owned property and businesses into hundreds of thousands, but it wasn’t.”

  Annie stood with her arm still about Abigail’s shoulder. She gave another hug. “Not to her it wasn’t. To this day she lives in a house most of you would consider mean. Mean? I tell you that house is her paradise. That’s where he courted her—through five, long, patient years. That’s where he endured her hate and all the mean tricks it served him. That’s where he humiliated himself to teach her to…to love. Not again. Not to love again. Just to love. For five years he waited, never giving up, always tender, waiting for her to…like…fish inside herself, fish through all that…filth—and find what was still there. ’Cos he knew, see! He knew it was still there.

  “The old songs are true: Love is golden. It don’t tarnish. And so she found it in the end. No—in the beginning…the beginning of these last seven years. And she’s found it every day since—for seven years. With him. And with their son. Who is, and will be, another man of that same kind.

  “What she never told you is this. That man—her life—the marvel and wonder of her life—died. Two days ago. Or yesterday. Yesterday morning. I don’t know. It don’t hardly matter no more.” Her voice trembled. She paused, gave Abigail another hug, half for the support she gained herself, and then, rallying, spoke on into the profound silence that now reigned. “Of nothing!” she said. “He just…died. Just died. Of nothing. You may think it cold for her to come out tonight and talk to you like what she did. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t have thought so. And nor don’t I. It was her…” She was not going to be able to finish. “…memorial, like. To him.” She was crying and speaking at once now. “And we…my sister and I…beg you…to take it as such!”

  They stood forlorn upon the stage, clasped together, weeping in a bereavement that was far, far beyond the reach even of the infinite sympathy that now welled up toward them.

  Chapter 54

  It was a large funeral. All his publishing and business friends were there, as were most of his employees and contributors. It took Annie and Abigail the best part of four days to organize, even with the help of an excellent general manager (whom Pepe had appointed in his will to run things until William was of age).

  The two women sat dry-eyed through the funeral service, thinking every tear they had was already shed. But at the interment, at that dreadful moment when the dark of the pit engulfs the coffin, and again when the first symbolic shot of earth thunders on its resonant lid, they broke down once more and held each other for comfort.

  Afterwards, as they walked slowly back to the carriages, Nora joined them. They were the last to leave. It was a bright winter’s day, cold, but full of sunshine. They paused and lingered often, without looking back, both feeling a reluctance to leave Pepe for the last time. For ever.

  Nora had joined them because she could contain her bewilderment no longer. “How did you know?” she asked Abigail.

  “I found some papers of Uncle Walter’s, after he died.” Then, seeing the pain and fear in her mother’s eyes, she added, “But I’ve destroyed them.”

  Annie was too inward with herself to care what they were talking about. But Abigail said, “Tell Annie, Mama. Explain it to her.”

  “Not explain,” Nora said. “Apologize.” She laughed without humour. “A dusty, rusty word in this mouth, I fear. I must apologize, Annie, and ask you to forgive what was unforgiveable and what no words can adequately make atonement for.”

  “What are you on about?” Annie asked angrily. Her anger was really fear. Annie always grew afraid when people stepped out of their expected roles. For the Countess to apologize and eat humble pie was as frightening as an earthquake.

  “Many years ago—but not so many that I had forgotten it—I, too, was starving and penniless. And I, too…” She could not say it. “You heard Abigail tell of a visit to a cemetery and a young gentleman there? Did you hear that part?”

  Annie, wide-eyed, nodded.

  “That was part of my life. Not yours. She wanted me to acknowledge it and so to acknowledge the wrong I did to you. And she is right.”

  But Annie did not hear these last words. She had already turned to Abigail and was saying, “You never!”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I call that wicked,” Annie said, dropping Abigail’s arm and linking instantly with Nora’s. “A wicked thing! You done right to kick me out, my lady.”

  “I wouldn’t do it again, not now, Annie.”

  “No? Well? Times have changed, eh? Anyway, if you hadn’t of done it, I’d never have turned into her sister, would I! And that’s all about it.”

  She linked arms again with Abigail and together they walked out to the coach, where Victor was waiting for them.

  Chapter 55

  That suffragist meeting was the last of Abigail’s public involvements for many months. All that spring and the ensuing summer she devoted to Victor. There could be no pretence between them; he was dying, day by day.

  They spent as much time as possible out of doors, for the sun and the fresh air relaxed him more than anything—and there was nothing so good for his heart as that relaxation. She read to him. She listened to his reminiscences—all those great and small events locked away in his mind, where would they go when he was gone? She held his hand. She soothed his pains. And she kept back her grief at his diminishing tenure.

  At weekends Annie and William came round and they would all get into the carriage, Frances too, and take a picnic up to the Vale of Health in Hampstead. William was an avid admirer of H.G. Wells and read the whole of The Time Machine to them, stretching it as a serial over four picnics. Abigail could never thereafter contemplate the End of the World without seeing the Time Traveller, sitting in his frail craft of brass and ivory, marooned forever on the shores of the deserted ladies-only swimming pool in the Vale of Health. The image carried a pleasing sense of finality.

  And when William went off to look for rats or frogs, Annie would match Victor, memory for memory. He loved her stories and borrowed the fire of her vitality on those last sunlit afternoons of his life.

  Then, with a golden autumn already upon them, his decline accelerated. With his lungs “waterlogged,” even breathing was difficult. To cross the room from bed to chair became a severe exercise, and a cause of searing pains that radiated from his chest sometimes to his toes.

  One evening she was pouring his draught of digitalis, the only medicine now that could keep his exhausted, overextended heart going. He raised his eyes to hers and said, “None of that tonight, eh?”

  She undressed and lay beside him, cradling his failing body without adding the burdens of weight or constriction to its last struggle.

  “You know where I want to go,” he said.

  She nodded, afraid that if she tried to speak the tears would betray her and pass out of her control.

  “Did we ever quarrel?” he asked. His voice was little more than a slow, watery whisper. “Or even think one harsh thought?”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  “Yet we lived for conflict all our lives!”

  “Darling!” She whispered it; her throat was too tight for her voice.

  “I have loved you.”

  “Oh, darling!” The tears flowed now. What point was there in stopping them? She rose on an elbow and began kissing his face.

  “You will go on with our work.”

  “Yes…yes…yes. For you.”

  “For everyone.”

  A silence fell. Children’s voices rose from the square below. A bee, dying too, buzzed on the window sill. The clock on the landing chimed some half hour.

  “You are a rare…revolutionary,” he whispered, failing fast. “You have done things in the proper order. First practice. Then theory.”

  Another silence. His
feeble fingers tapped her hand.

  “I am an old man…” he began. A faint but regular tremor—the laughter he could not, or dared not, make—shook him.

  She kissed him again and again, then lay whispering into his ear, knowing that while she spoke the last of life slipped from him.

  “Goodbye, my darling, and thank you and thank you and thank you for being you and caring so much for me and saving me from the waste and emptiness and…and…oh, Victor! My love…my most precious, my darling, my everlasting love…”

  An eternity later the clock on the landing chimed the hour.

  Chapter 56

  She buried him near the spot he had chosen, in the empty quarter of Highgate Cemetery. She, Annie, Frances, and William were the sole mourners, at her request. She kept reminding herself of the pain from which death had delivered him. She told herself that all the wonder of him still lived in her, and would live there until she joined him in this very place. She remembered the work they had conceived and begun together—and would finish together. He would be there, in every moment of it.

  She knew all these things to be true, but her dumbfounded body would give her no peace. Already her eyes pleaded with the sunlit air to part, to enclose and reveal that all-precious shape of him. They searched among the golden, weeping trees for the merest passing shadow that might turn into him. As Frances and William walked quietly away, leaving the two ladies for their moment there alone, she discovered how cruelly the gravel could mimic that most beloved footfall.

  Annie touched her arm. She looked around, astonished to see the other two already so far away, almost at the cemetery gate.

  But as she turned and began to walk, an amazing lightness, almost a piercing joy, filled her. It was as if his spirit had leaped from the earth and joined her. No longer did she feel so desolately alone. She heaved an enormous sigh, ventilating her whole body, bracing every corner of her.